A RITE OF ‘PASSAGE’: BHS grads off the grid for Alaska kayak adventure

Published 11:34 am Sunday, July 19, 2015

Alaska.

The last frontier in America.

It’s not your typical sunny summer road trip destination, but, then again, these particular trippers aren’t taking a typical road to get there.

Islanders Luca Lezzi, 22, and Xander Fehsenfeld, 21, prominent members of the Bainbridge Island rowing community, are now putting their skills to the test, having set their sights on the country’s northernmost state as the end point of a long-intended kayak adventure, which they began earlier this year.

The duo departed from Fay Bainbridge Park in May, and have since been paddling up the east side of Vancouver Island, on their way to Skagway, Alaska, where they hope to make landfall in August.

It is a journey of more than 1,200 miles.

Their summertime saga caught the attention of the local filmmaking group Vignette Creative, who began filming the pair’s preparation, practice and early days underway as part of an intended documentary film “Passage.”

The creative group initially wanted to film the kayakers as a camera test for some of their newer equipment — including a drone, but they quickly became enthralled with the island adventurers and their story, and decided to expand the project.

Lezzi, a junior at Pacific Lutheran University and employee at Bay Hay & Feed in Rolling Bay, said he’s had a fascination with kayaking the Inside Passage since he was a student at Bainbridge High School.

“I feel like I need some big challenge in my life right now,” Lezzi said before departing. “I feel like I’m doing what everyone else is doing, and I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing.”

“I want to really push myself in a different way,” he added.

The attention of the filmmakers did not matter to him, Lezzi said, but they were welcome to tag along.

If they could keep up.

“A lot of people, they [do something like this to highlight] a disease, they’re doing it for a movie, they’re doing it for sponsors — they are doing it for something,” he said. “And, I don’t know, I’m just doing it to do it, I guess.”

It was just this sense of existentialism, a truly American “manifest destiny” mindset, that made the project so enticing for the Vignette Creative team.

“Pretty quickly, we thought we might have something more intriguing than a camping trip video on our hands,” said Gary Matoso, the group’s founder and creative director. “After showing the video trailer around, we got the message loud and clear that people want to see more of this trip.”

Vignette then scraped together a minimal starting budget and planned a second trip, sending some of the team to meet up with the pair again while underway this week.

They’re hoping to raise funds for a final trip to document the journey’s end through the crowd funding site www.indiegogo.com. They have already raised about half of what they expect it to take to complete the entire project, including travel expenses for the final days of filming.

“We definitely underestimated the amount of time and money it would take,” said Brian Spielman, the project’s producer and editor. “We’ve been intentionally focused on taking it as it comes. I think, in documentary work, if you do it any other way you could go crazy.”

Founded in 2010, Vignette specializes in documentary work — video, stills and interactive media — for brands and organizations looking to tell a story. This project though, produced for no client but themselves, put the island-based creative group in the unique position of being truly independent, Spielman explained.

“It feels both really liberating and pretty scary when you actually have a chance to make the final call,” he said. “It’s just a story that we saw that was really cool.”

Ultimately, Spielman said, the group hopes to produce a true feature-length documentary about the island pair’s adventure, possibly submitting it to film festivals and screenings around the country.

Vignette estimates that about $7,500 more will be necessary to properly finish the project, and their online appeal offers various perk packages for those who donate, which include special gifts such as tickets to the eventual film premiere, a custom-designed shirt and the chance to meet the film’s cast and crew at an exclusive reception event.

Interested readers can learn more about the project and how to donate at www.indiegogo.com/projects/passage-a-documentary-project#/story.

“The amount we’re currently campaigning for is a result of careful planning and consideration,” the group’s online project proposal reads. “It’s what we know we need at minimum to complete this story. The majority of the budget is transportation (flights, baggage fees, chartering a small motor boat to keep up with Luca and Xander) and, of course, some camping food and equipment (batteries and memory cards go fast when you’re out in the wilderness).”

The group is seeking donations to cover costs and expenses only, Spielman said, and not postproduction or time.

“This is a passion project for us,” he said. “We try our best to keep it human. We want to confront and present things that have real issues we can all connect with.”